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About two years ago, Ryan Matheson visited Canada. Canadian customs checked out his notebook computer and found a Japanese manga on it which the customs official decided was out of line. Matheson was charged with possession of, and importation of, child porn. After two years of legal maneuvering, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund just announced that Matheson "has agreed to plead to a non-criminal code regulatory offense under the Customs Act of Canada. As a result of the agreement, Matheson will not stand trial." He also won't be listed as a sex offender, in Canada or anywhere else, and he won't have a criminal record.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:13 PM PST - 201 comments

Touted as the cure for what ails public education, charter schools have historical roots that are rarely discussed. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 9:11 PM PST - 39 comments

"If it were just the NCAA tournament bracket, March Madness would be far less mad than it is. Something about the reminder of how much joy we get in filling out a bracket has led writers and talkers deep into the great time-wasting ether, creating brackets on everything you could possible dream of bracketing."

One writer thought about this, took a step back, and created a bracket tournament to discuss the best possible subjects/entries for a pop-culture, food, and sports bracket tournament. [more inside]
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:10 PM PST - 28 comments

The Sun has been in a bit of a mood lately, spitting out some pretty big flares (including the second largest one of the current magnetic cycle) Be sure to scroll down for the photo of the entire Sun, it will change the way you think about it.
posted by HuronBob at 7:38 PM PST - 61 comments

Sarah Fimm wants to inspire people to use their creative talents to promote human rights. To that end, she's encouraging people to take portions of her and fellow artists' works Everything Becomes Whole" - music, lyrics, images and music video - to create new presentations focusing attention on ending slavery. [more inside]
posted by grimjeer at 4:35 PM PST - 18 comments

It being bracket season, The Weather Channel has devised an epic Weather Song tournament for those not interested in college athletics. It consists of four weather-related phenomena, with underdogs and favorites abounding. "Have you Ever Seen the Rain" trounced "the crowd-favorite Weather Girls' It's Raining Men" in the first round of the Rain Region. Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" upset Bananarama's summer-related hit in the Seasons Region. Voting is still open until tomorrow for round two of the Sun and Elements regions.
posted by obscurator at 2:34 PM PST - 40 comments

Rise of the TIMBIs: Forget the BRICs. Andrew Leung of CHINAWatch responds.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:22 PM PST - 10 comments

This is the Occupy movement we should really be worried about. The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data. The stuck-at-home mentality hits college-educated Americans as well as those without high school degrees.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 2:05 PM PST - 304 comments

Beautiful HD video, with enhanced sound, of STS-117 and STS-127 booster rockets launching and returning to Earth . Previously.
posted by swift at 2:00 PM PST - 29 comments

Quora: What do all the controls in an airplane cockpit do?
posted by zarq at 1:56 PM PST - 70 comments

We've all heard about the proliferation of CCTV in the UK. Now, accounting firm Ernst & Young has a new scheme for the Brits: Uninsured drivers won't be able to fill up. [more inside]
posted by symbioid at 1:43 PM PST - 53 comments

E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Master of the Universe, an adults-only Twilight fanfiction posted under the pseudonym Snowqueens Icedragon. The erotica re-imagining of Bella Swan as a 21-year-old college student and Edward Cullen as a 27-year-old billionaire -- with BDSM tastes -- was published by Australia's Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing in May 2011; names and details linking it to Stephenie Meyer's bestselling trilogy were changed (...for the most part). In recent months, the book has gone viral, selling more than 250,000 copies (over 90% in ebook format) and landing the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. Last week, E.L. James sold republishing rights for the Fifty Shades trilogy to Vintage Books in a seven-figure deal. [more inside]
posted by changeling at 1:17 PM PST - 99 comments

Notes from a Videodrome test screening
posted by Artw at 1:13 PM PST - 65 comments

Plenty of people collect Disneyana, the toys, books, animation cels, and theme-park souvenirs. Then there are those fans who collect information and details on the Disney parks themselves, collecting official park maps or drawing up their own ride blueprints, assembling the design history behind the attractions, and even collecting vintage tickets and ticket books. Yesterland (previously: 1, 2, 3) is an ever-growing collection of Disneyland history, and has an updated collection of links to similar fan sites and Imagineering blogs, which is a whole collection of rabbit holes of nostalgia and behind-the-scense information. So grab a riding crop and pretend like it's the 60s all over again!
posted by filthy light thief at 12:56 PM PST - 9 comments

The Keith Haring Foundation is posting Haring's journals to Tumblr for the duration of the exhibition Keith Haring: 1978–1982, opening tomorrow at the Brooklyn Museum.
posted by gyusan at 11:34 AM PST - 14 comments

The greatest hits from Arnold Schwarzenegger commentary track for 'Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines'. SLYT, Possibly NSFW, previous
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:36 AM PST - 108 comments

The Hacker Shelf is nice crowd-sourced guide to (legally) free books on various computational and mathematical subjects. The topics page gives you an idea of the breadth of material available.
posted by philipy at 9:56 AM PST - 24 comments

Still a Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser reflects on his book's tenth anniversary (previously).
posted by box at 8:37 AM PST - 86 comments

Time Out HK counts down the 100 Greatest Hong Kong Films (along with a mind map of the perfect HK film), while lovehkfilm.com begins its series on the Top 100 Hong Kong Films of the Eighties.
posted by milquetoast at 8:34 AM PST - 57 comments

"So far, 2012 is shaping up to be a great year for archery, what with The Hunger Games coming in March, then Brave, followed by Hawkeye in The Avengers." An archery coach analyzes the technique in three upcoming movies.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:31 AM PST - 58 comments

"Vitamin R goes straight to the head. Ruby will teach you to express your ideas through a computer. You will be writing stories for a machine. The language will become a tool for you to better connect your mind to the world." Slate compiles the mystery of _why. (Previously).
posted by oulipian at 7:08 AM PST - 78 comments

Why Nations Fail - In a nutshell: "Proximately, prosperity is generated by investment and innovation, but these are acts of faith: investors and innovators must have credible reasons to think that, if successful, they will not be plundered by the powerful. For the polity to provide such reassurance, two conditions have to hold: power has to be centralised and the institutions of power have to be inclusive." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:54 AM PST - 79 comments

"In short, the types of things that [tabletop RPG] players want are bad for the game."
posted by griphus at 6:17 AM PST - 64 comments

National Geographic photographer Mattias Klum talks about having a face to face run in with an endangered Asiatic lioness while shooting in the wild. [more inside]
posted by quin at 5:43 AM PST - 29 comments

Another day, another story of a Goldman Sachs employee quitting. This one, though, isn't filing any op-eds - rather, he's starting up his own custom condom business, TheyFit, which offers 95 different sizes. Warning: puns ahead.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:31 AM PST - 37 comments

Oh yeah. There he is, Mr. RL Burnside, in the year of nineteen and seventy eight, Independence, Mississippi, porch fulla kids, singin' about when his first wife left him, million-dollar smile on his face. And there he is again, with his guitar and amp, out by the barb wire fence, a poor boy a long way from home. These two little gems just added to the Alan Lomax Archive YouTube channel, where you'll also find some wonderful newly-uploaded clips (filmed in 1983) from fretless banjo plucker Tommy Jarrell, the toast of Toast, North Carolina.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:56 AM PST - 9 comments